Preface to Lunch Revisiting our unofficial motto

Author: James O'Brien

I heard someone say the words, "work hard, play hard" this weekend, and that, along with the Natural Ice that somehow ended up in my CUPPS mug, made me want to throw up. The whole "Work Hard!!! Play Hard!!!" philosophy is possibly the second dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's topped only by the fact that Subway's slogan is still "Eat Fresh." Whenever I hear "Eat Fresh," I feel as thought the commercials are intentionally directing me away from Subway - and towards a place that actually serves fresh food and doesn't microwave their meatball subs. They should change the slogan to "Eat Cheaply at a Place Endorsed by Some Guy Named Jared." In that case, I would appreciate their honesty and maybe buy something from them. Third place, in case you're wondering, goes to the fine print that pops up during Cialis ads that tell us that Cialis does not protect against HIV. Oh, really? Why is that even in the ad? Did people seriously think that their erectile dysfunction drug made them immune to HIV, leading them to sue Cialis over it… I can't figure this out.

Anyway, the "work hard-play hard" dynamic is equally as silly as the Subway slogan and Cialis' fine print. Let's look at what we are actually doing when we "work hard" and "play hard." For a good percentage of the campus, when we do what we refer to as "working hard," we're not even working up a sweat. Committed athletes certainly do their fair share of actual work, but a lot of us, me included, just sit at a computer flipping through a book and call that working hard. Not that you need to go out and plow a field on a daily basis, but, and somehow it took me like two years to realize this, the actual real world difficulty level of our "hard work" is not that high. Sometimes I'm amazed by our collective ability to make ourselves as anxious about a calculus exam as our parents were about the threat of a Russian bomb exploding on their school.

In terms of the "playing hard" half of the equation, we seem to define playing hard as consuming large amounts of substances and then maybe having sex. I don't think that actually qualifies as "hard" (insert here: erection joke that I was too lazy to write). It's certainly hard on your brain cells and liver and whatnot, but the actual act of doing something like taking three shots in a row doesn't take much physical effort at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure my grandmother Phyllis could do it, and she's an 83 year-old woman with severe back problems and high blood pressure; though the fact that she can't taste anything anymore might actually give her an advantage over us in downing Cossack Vodka. My point here is that what most people call "playing hard" isn't hard at all, and it's really not all that fun either. Still, we pursue this vague idea of playing hard, and that's just the problem. Because when you chase an idea, you never end up catching it. Instead, everyone just ends up wandering from place to place, doggedly pursuing something they don't understand and can't define, and then somehow ending up at the Mods wondering what went wrong with their night. To me when you have several of your friends in one place, along with some new people you are getting to know, that's the best thing you could hope for.

Instead of working hard and playing hard, maybe our motto should just be "work and play, and eat fresh." It's simple, but that's the beauty of it. You really don't need to end every night by walking 15 miles to the Mods in a desperate attempt to "have fun." If there's one lesson I've learned in life, it's this: fun is always much closer to you than the Mods. If you take time look at what is right next to you - without expectations or judgments - you might find that, even though you aren't looking for anything, you've somehow found just what you're looking for.